 me and everybody and it is my pleasure to be with Felicia Kagan who I've known for a very long time and very involved in how I politics. Very thoughtful, very caring. One of the most gentle people throughout all cultures on the island and the segue I'm then to move to is Dennis Ozaki starred this show two years ago had me on it never invited back I said that I talked too much and then he smiled meaning that he liked listening and he liked asking questions that's the beauty of being a host here but as the host I am going to do many remembrances of Dennis for his generosity intelligence helpfulness and guidance morality he was very ethical and and I'm not the only one I think you know everyone on the island that knew him would say something like that I'm going to turn to you Felicia on that score because you are well you know I was hurtbroken and surprised and shocked when he seemed to get ill and passed so quickly Dennis was a man of many talents he helped build modern Hawaii you know just about every significant thing that happened he was out there serving for it his names on almost all of the last time for decades he's done so much good work I don't I don't really know how we're we're going to be able to move forward without him so well I've been just like I was when I knew I was coming on the show I had this to give to his family this is a a certificate of condolence you know from our county council to his family and his business he's done so much and I was rereading it and I we put it in here also that he was a part of think tech Hawaii and I think it did a lot even to make our kawaii issues really come on to the awareness of the entire state you know this is a great program and he's a great thing and happy I do talk radio too and you have cat and him on my show and he's an enormous source of information it's it's uh it's heartbreaking to think of not having them with us but you know what even all this library of programs that he did with think tech that's another part of his legacy to keep moving forward so that's a really good piece wow I am burdened and exhilarated by that statement because I shared much the same thoughts and the footnote on that is that he had printed up cards as a think tech host and I was told by his niece that he was so proud of this and as a host for a talk show you better than most would know a good interview and and not just a good interviewee but just a good flow of conversation those two meaningful stuff as humor has intelligence and has a point so fill me this I'm going to start in I'm 72 years old and as as an observer of politics not until I left Hawaii as maybe 25 26 in all that time I finally arrived at the point of view that women make the best politicians and legislatures and that's a generality but behind that is the thought that of temperance and and I don't want to say distance but an appreciation of positions and maybe it's the lack of testosterone I don't know do you have any feeling about that well you know I when I joke when I'm telling people I always give out my cell phone number or anything I say you can look on the council website I'm the one in the dress you know usually on kawaii it's one or men females on the county council so this is my third term in office and I'm that one and I'd say we all work really pretty well together me and six men I would say that there is a little bit of a difference and at least where I think I fit certain type of feminine stereotype is I'm I'm pretty heavy empath you know I I have a lot of compassion for our community one of my most favorite aspects of the job is really the heart centered work of meeting with constituents going out there to their houses to their places of work I like to make calls and that's the most meaningful way for me and when I'm out there and I'm working with people and I get to experience what their challenges are it helps me understand how to make policy better so I think we all have different things we bring to the table and I will say that especially this time around the the guys are pretty good to me and so you know they're pretty good so I like them but yes it's a little different being you know I'm a little different than they are I'll just say that but I'm honored to have the job pardon me that's fair to say that one the what what the great franchise you bring is diversity and I salute going door to door because there's nothing like that there's nothing like the personal touch and that's basically you're in a a personalistic society that we on kawaii and I use the small we is the royal we belongs to those when I'm able to go out when people call me when they have a challenge I go and I listen to what's happening for them and when I have a talk radio program it's kind of made me be the complaint department for the island like that priest seated being a council member so I think people are used to hearing me as a facilitator and I also have been a volunteer uh court mediator so I go out and I'm able to speak with people and it helps me to have a more holistic or comprehensive approach to solving problems and so even as we're maybe going to move into talking about hazard mitigation fire safety we have this tragedy that is ongoing in Lahaina and I think that it's fair to say that it was an absolute expose of finding a cascade of weaknesses in you know the government comprehensive way of handling things that just was like that like I said a cascade of finding the weak points and so we had so many mistakes that happened and you know when I look at kawaii or the state as a whole it is heartbreaking because it couldn't happen to any of us on our island here on kawaii we have long thin narrow roads that be you know big parts of the population we can have half hour rush hour traffic in panalay you know a very small town you know it's because of the way our roads are designed in the you know just going right around the island in thin ways so this could have happened to any of our islands it's terrible that it happened to Lahaina it happened to Maui and so I'm I'm really working hard I was already working hard on looking at hazard mitigation when we had our 2018 flood that collapsed the highway I live on the north side of kawaii it was my catalytic reason for running and it hasn't been so easy to really move that needle very far but I'm thinking right now when we have the eyes of the world on us certainly the eyes of the nation it is the right time to be able to be bringing in at least some federal funds some outside of our area ideology and ability to help do wildfire fighting and you know I look at what's happened is sugars gone down plantation styles gone down and then certainly what predated that though Hawaiian ahupua land management style that utilized everything that managed land in a very environmentally friendly aloha aina kind of way and modern society is a lot more than just what ethnic group is in the lead driver's seat because really it's a cacao thing really we're all in the driver's seat aren't we it's not like one race is ahead of another one ethnicity is ahead of another we're all in there we're all leading we're all doing things but we've got modern power lines we have a dependency on the fiber optic cable we have complex society where we're in buildings we're in resorts people who have a lot of resort workers in that area we didn't see what was happening and you know I'm looking for what we can do on kawaii to make it right and then what we can do to add to the knowledge of the whole chain of islands and for every one of us and Ricky you have a long generational history on kawaii is that correct uh my great grandmother came here yes and then actually the first one was brought kamehameha and a boat over to the russian port raised the flag that he had designed for kamehameha and um later on traded sandalwood up and down the hoppa trail uh and from that uh i am a lineal descendant from the uh koloa yeah so the early time of the connection of our cultures from west to the pacific and so we have we have a lot you have a lot of history and you know what i i think is maybe part of the challenge is a sugar has gone away a statehood happened during the time of sugar we didn't maybe have enough plans for who has the responsibility of the land and it's very different than when we were in our ahupua land management system time or sugar because we have so many introduced plants and so many more threats like from the power lines and things so there's a lot of reasons and i i prefer to be looking at how we solve this right now with outshame and blame but what can we do and others can decide that but i'm looking at at what we can do and i i'm the only one on our council that wasn't born here i came here 21 years old and i grew up in the rocky mountain areas and high fire areas and so what was real central to my awareness some of my uh cousins were hot shots hot shots are the firemen for the forest service and the federal government they have hot shots and smoke jumpers and you know we're used to slurry bombers and for municipal fire departments to be out there fighting wildfires they really are outdone and so one of the things i've done is i've gotten in contact with one of the contractors that used to be in the national incident man service for the forest service in the federal government who grew up in Guam so they understand the islands but he works with a number of the tribal people largely for his firemen firefighters from the forest and right now they're up there in Smith river area the California Oregon border fighting fires but he's asking him you know well what can we do how can we help this and so i have in that party i'm going to talk to the mayor hopefully he'll like my ideas but you know i'm not trying to work around anybody i'm just trying to bring this idea to the table and there's federal monies where it can be and you have like another layer of first responders and typically those are very young people you know you want young strong ridiculously courageous usually people once they are parenting they they stop being right on the front line of these fires but uh what they what he would do and i'm just kind of putting it out there because i want the whole state to think about this grab about four or five tired from each of the different islands and you know the best would be people who have a cultural understanding of how to relate to the land the wind the water you know that knows their islands very well and he would like to be taking them to the southwest and train them there and train them with continental united states fires which are big and serious and overwhelming fires that have a lot and so his organization would be paying them and then bringing them back and seeing if what we could do is work with fire departments here and the landowners here and help do the free firework that's where you really fight the fires when you have the brush cut away from the problematic areas when you have the water sources identified i want to see if we can't work at reviving our reservoirs instead of shutting them down making them more safe putting stand pipes off them stand pipes maybe some for state lands certainly to use the county at least on for why we have inadequate fire flow so if we had the county as a client to help support the reservoir and use that one you know for our fire flow we have many long valleys then different areas all over the island actually that doesn't have fire flow if there is a fire for the fire department okay i understand that better than most thanks to having a dam on another land and looking at that completely different now because it emphasizes having that resource available in the emergency and water is fungible i mean there's the one time event of of a fire you know every 10 years or five years or whatever probably is a little bit more but just to have that reassurance if what i like about what was just said was um the way you catalog resource is you do it through people so you go to the farms you integrate them you go to landowners to integrate them with fire fighting not just the professionals but also the community because i've heard over and over that sometimes dilly hand ranch was saved from the fire because of the manager there moana called up the cowboys to get on the bulldozer and dig me a firebreak and and he went up the road and did all that and that action not only saved dilly hand ranch what better place in kawaii but we're all we've got tons of machines we're all good at using them and the only secret sauce would be you know to coordinate and and and tighten the coordination with cooperation communication lines and empathy empathy lines it's it's the kind of thing when that storm hit uh in 2018 isa from the hill and the lightning almost hit me uh and it was slowly left over how late i mean i had a ton of empathy but boy i tell you i was i got scared down the hill yeah the the lightning was really intense and what you're you're speaking of there is the importance of well everybody the whole community but with the large landowners i had the blessing being invited out to gay and robinson when our two of our fire teams were out there uh their manager our green doesn't say it you know he had a big the smart grid i mean smart screen up and we looked at where they had uh non-pollable water stand types up looked at where the gates were wet block where's um buildings i would really like to see us do that with all of our large landowners and then also be working with our community associations and so even with this idea of having a fire i mean a wildfire fighting crew they they would just be working with these people and maybe do trainings working together if there's a big fire like we just saw with malia you would take all of them from every island and go right there and and fight it together there with the firemen and just like our uh life saving people our ocean safety team our ocean safety officers they're great water usually after a time they join the fire department right very often when you have these wildfire fighters i would expect that they would join the fire department you know as they age out into stronger adulthood some of them would become key people in the fire department so you have this cross pollination cross elements and so i think there's a lot that we do that would work and it can be many other types of disasters that we prepare for that you can use a team like this to be an environmental disaster team that's just heavier focused on the non-municipal type of disasters particularly especially fire so i think that that would work that kind of things speaks to two-way conversation again the the generational knowledge you pass it up and down but also i'd like to go side to side again you know the amateurs not to the professionals and i'm going to use that as a segway to taxes because some of the stuff that that you're talking about has tremendous benefit now we have this the benefit in calc the problem was nobody saw raising money for it or put it better way calibrating asking for benefit of the tax and then giving the benefit we see that over and over and so any tax policy and thank you for serving on the council because boy do i know how hard it is uh and and i'm going to bring in i'm going to bring in taxes and when we're looking at this funding something right now i think we could probably pull some federal funding in we have on kawai a really wonderful new director of our water department our chief engineer he's got a lot of experience of getting federal federal monies we also have a city council person from honolulu just say it as your yeah i know she she's done i know she has done worked with daniel anoy and she was telling the rest of us you mentioned the hawaii state association of county she's part of that and you know how we can access some of these federal monies at least to get ourselves started and going particularly with things like the reservoirs and the fire flow protection but when we're looking even at property taxes which is more um our run-of-the-mill municipal uses but certainly can fire departments and our water department all of that uh we on kawaii we are having the same challenge that every other island is really actually all the states are and that's that the inflation and the market pressures have raised housing values skyrocketed it by we're to give a shout out to grassroot institute i they had an article that i thought was really important when it's saying you know we kind of as counties were raking it in on the property taxes because everybody's properties went up so high we have a lot of we have a tax cap of three percent on our homestead which we're now calling owner occupant houses but a lot of the other ones houses are selling for 10 million 15 million and either side of somebody who bought their house for eight or nine hundred thousand dollars or five hundred thousand dollars 20 years ago so it's pressuring everything up so we have been trying to brainstorm ways to contain that and you know we still have to make the money because we have all this inflation also on fire trucks just because we were talking about that last fire truck we bought was nine hundred thousand dollars the next one will certainly be a million you know they've gone up so much everything has so we're looking and already passed a tiered structure and we're doing our county is going to have tiers on every tax pass if we want to so do you know what that means help me i'm going to throw my numbers in that i want because i live in an expensive side like all the low land line areas near the beach those are all just crazy expensive and when the north the northeast is expensive so i'd like to see that first tier be 2.5 million so 2.5 million that means the decent house right that's not a mansion that could be a shaft in Hanalei and so we're doing a tiered structure i'd like to see the next tier be five million above five million that's even more so people i mean so the first 2.5 million gets taxed lower than the next gets a little bit higher than the highest part gets taxed even more trying to make it be where people can bear the cost of what they're being taxed and but we really need the people to engage we also have something on the agenda for next week and that's where there's a tax path of 20 percent above assessment so it means if you have that person buy a place on one side for 10 million the other one for eight you can't jump up more than 20 percent of what your last year's tax was that would take almost five years for your property assessment to double and i think that will help people because we are just replacing our population as we're having so many people come and taxes are boring until you get hit with them and you aren't expecting them and you can lose your house over it you can have to toss your tenants we have had a lot of replacement of our population and so we really need people to engage i'd really like to see lenders come to our committee meeting next week we meet on wednesdays because i think it'll you know we want to make sure our market isn't too volatile but if everything gets affected you know it affects the mortgage if people if that people have a mortgage and then their tax rate jumps enormously which happened last year unexpectedly when people can't make their payments yeah that was that was dramatic uh your basic method is comparables and unfortunately what they call comparables should be apples to apples but sometimes your neighbor on one side is an orange the other side is a prune and your your apple or your golden apple infects them all and vice versa the other thing i throw out is to look at people's circumstances we do this well with our capuna we do take it into account people's incomes i wouldn't mind looking at people's legacies if they're first generation second generation and i go there because it's recognizing their ancestors paid into it i don't mean i don't want free rise i and maybe i'm turning communists i do want people to give what they can give rightfully uh and i want also yeah it's challenging with that i know we're taxing people really hard maybe their family gave the land for the school and for the hospital and for the soccer field and everything else um we have to stay within the constitution of the united states so we have a very complicated tax form where we're trying to support and protect our working people our working families our people with generational knowledge they probably are the biggest effort is there to help them um but we have to be constitutionally fair so it's not as easy as you think but we can meet on that and um i appreciate your input and anybody else and i sure appreciate this opportunity to speak with you on fake tech i want you i appreciate it too and i knew that this would be a thought piece of this is what i was shooting for and the only other thing i would say is i know raton talk show is great but uh writing essays and and um even letters emails the thought behind writing is great because you get to control it and maybe string some stuff together the benefit isn't just to the reader it's also to the writer because then you can layer and and you can go to a point and maybe have a side sidebar above all keep speaking out keep testing things there's nothing better than challenging people's thinking they've got to think they cannot do the same old thing the same way um and everybody we need everybody make good calls well when i heard denise checked out i called him up on the phone and i i left a message saying he checked out too soon he was one that really thought of what it meant for everybody all the way down to the length of driveways so on that denise is knocking out um i join you in and uh a fondle oil on the 30th and um uh and see him in the in the next world yes so thank you thank you very much appreciate it